Makes me think Fedora is a very good idea.....

I always feel compelled to point out that other platforms aren't immune to viruses, spyware and malware either (it's probably an consequence of too many years reading Slashdot, a habit I'm happy I've managed to break). Both Macs and Linux are susceptible to some attack vectors and while I agree that the online world would be a better place if more people switched to Linux, some of us just don't have the option and for others it might turn out to be a huge mistake.

I'm an ex-UNIX sysadmin and I DO run SuSe on one of my machines but my day job is .NET development and for that I need Visual Studio and Photoshop, neither of which are available on the Linux platform (nor are likely to be in the forseeable future). Add to that the problems with device drivers on Linux and to simply state that Linux is the solution to everyone's home PC woes is misleading. OK, I know the vast majority of reent hardware devices are supported "out of the box" on most Linux distros but there aren't many "average" home users who could cope with downloading, building and linking a device driver for an unsupported 3-year old graphics card and there's no reason why they should. I know things are changing in that respect but I still maintain that Linux just isn't ready for the desktop yet (servers are another matter). And for some people (like me), there simply isn't a choice.

If everyone switched to Linux or Mac OSX overnight, all that would happen is that the virus writers would start targeting those platforms instead of Windows and within a year or so we'd be in the same situation with the roles reversed.

Another free program I have used.

Spyware Blaster

Using this program, Firefox with the no script add on and AVG anti virus, I have never .... and I mean never had spyware or virus on my PC.

use Spybot Search and Destroy to view which procsses are being loaded at system startup s&d will give you a discription of each one that is loaded if something cant be explained you have the option to remove it from the startup, on average there should be around 35 process running. Press ctrl/alt and del to view what proesses are running. There are two things that s&d can install to help protect your system, teatimer and SD-resident these will stay resident and help protect your pc. Using well setup firewall software will help also and upto date AV software. recieving spam e-mails can be down to you being on lots of mailing lists, be carefull who you give you e-mail to. If your using outlook (part of ms office) or outlook express as a e-mail client and using the address book that is built in Make sure your windows and MSoffice updates and patches are all up to date you should keep these upto date even if you are not running outlook. There is some nasty code around that can get on you system and then start e-mailing people in your address book. I have scheduled s&d and adware to run once a week. Hope this helps. and before people start saying we dont get any problems with our macs may i just say be affaid, very affaid, its coming.

k